Understanding the Issue: Massive SSD Writes Caused by Radeon Driver Bug
Last week, AMD Radeon GPU users discovered that following one of the older Adrenalin driver updates, massive amounts of data were being continuously written to the system SSD. This issue was identified by AMD and has now been addressed with the release of the Adrenalin Edition 26.11.1 driver update. Users shared their experiences on X (formerly Twitter), showing a process called AMD External Events Client Module (atieclxx.exe) that was writing data to the system drive at up to 0.3 MB/s to 1.5 MB/s, with some cases reaching 5 MB/s. This update resolves the issue for Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs and addresses the same issue when “moving or resizing application windows,” though the latter isn't GPU-specific.
Checking if Your System is Affected
To check if your system is affected, follow these steps:
- Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager.
- Right-click on any column header and click on ‘Select columns’.
- Enable I/O read bytes and I/O write bytes.
- Sort by I/O write bytes and look for ‘atieclxx.exe’.
- If the value keeps increasing, your system has been affected.
Updating to the Latest AMD Adrenalin Driver
To resolve the issue, update to the latest AMD Adrenalin driver:
- Download and install the Adrenalin Edition 26.11.1 driver from the provided link.
- Click on the Adrenalin Edition 26.11.1 Driver link to start your 1.7 GB download.
- Double-click on the downloaded package and select ‘Yes’ to start unpacking.
- AMD Software Installer should start and check the system for compatibility.
- Click ‘Accept & Express Install’ to install the latest driver.
Conclusion
AMD has released the Adrenalin Edition 26.11.1 driver update to address the driver bug causing massive SSD writes. Users should follow the steps provided to check if their system is affected and update to the latest driver to resolve the issue. If not resolved, contact AMD support for further instructions.
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